


Winds without Chaos

by nautilicious



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-21
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 05:32:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/975009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nautilicious/pseuds/nautilicious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly knows that Sherlock will never notice her in the way that she wants to be noticed. She wants it anyway. Until, finally, she doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winds without Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd or Brit-picked (I need a beta, btw...) so please drop me a line if you see any mistakes.
> 
> I'm sure that I was influenced in some part by gyzm's lovely fic [An Avalanche of Detour Signs](http://archiveofourown.org/works/340976). If you want to get more into Molly's head I recommend it highly.

Molly knows that Sherlock will never notice her in the way that she wants to be noticed. She’s seen how his eyes linger on John Watson’s face, searching for every last clue and unwritten word in his expression. Molly yearns to be fascinating enough to someone to be that important. To anyone, really, though she doesn’t know any person as painfully beautiful as Sherlock. But his face holds no softness when he looks at her.

She knows it isn’t healthy. Still, she can’t help wanting his attention no matter how futile that hope. Sherlock’s full focus, given willingly to corpses (but only one living being), seems to have a gravity unto itself. She can only imagine what it might be like: pinned by his eyes into a hyperreal moment where everything inside her becomes transparent. His gaze, focused on her to the exclusion of all else, his mind full of the details on her clothes, her body, her innermost thoughts -- she imagines herself taking on solidity in his eyes, becoming more real and more understood than she’d ever been before.

But she gets tired of waiting, of course she does. Doing things just to get Sherlock’s attention -- even if she doesn’t realize that was what she was doing at first -- fails to pay off, quite disastrously. First she gets written up at work for allowing Sherlock access to body parts. Then she goes out to dinner with Jim Moriarty. In the aftermath of that narrow escape she feels, for the first time, grateful that she isn’t important to Sherlock Holmes.

After realizing that Jim could be considered a kind of twisted version of Sherlock, complete with the ability to lie seamlessly to Molly and no compunctions about doing so, she decides that maybe an intense relationship isn’t what she wants. Sherlock is too much. His lifestyle might work for John Watson, but she wants something else for herself. She wants to have dinners where both parties get to make intelligent conversation, to share laughs over embarrassingly bad telly, and go on long walks around her neighborhood with a boyfriend (or girlfriend, honestly -- she feels a bit off the drama of boyfriends just now) that cares about her with a normal level of intensity. She wants passion, yes, but not the kind of obsession she sees in Sherlock’s grasp of John’s arm.

* * * 

She doesn’t let go of the idea of Sherlock without some tears, of course. Releasing a crush requires soul-searching and self-flagellating, and she has a wee relapse due to holiday loneliness around Christmas. She buys gifts nicer than she can afford for everyone at Baker Street. She regrets buying Sherlock’s almost before she pays for it, and then tells herself that everyone likes gifts and surely he’ll take it in the spirit of the season. She’s swayed by the handsome shop assistant and lets him wrap it for her, though she feels a bit horrified at the result.

The Christmas party puts her crush in the ground (well, that and having to see his expression while identifying the body of his ex-girlfriend). She knows full well that Sherlock can say cruel things; his default mode seems to be unkindness through inattention. She can handle that, always makes private excuses for why he’s distracted enough to hurt her feelings. At Christmas, though, she runs out of excuses. He makes her feel ashamed and embarrassed. Getting fancied up feels vulnerable; his derision of her dress and makeup crushes her utterly. 

Mrs. Hudson was quite upset about it. Molly likes to pretend that Mrs. Hudson doesn’t know at whom Molly aimed her well-displayed curves in that black sheath, but Mrs. Hudson knows. Mrs. Hudson has always known, and she encouraged Molly to buy the fuck-me dress anyways. She told Molly how lovely she looked. “You’re gorgeous in it,” she’d said, “and you never know whose eyes you’ll be wanting to catch. Best to be prepared.”

Molly started popping by Mrs. Hudson’s flat at the beginning of her obsessive-crush-stalker phase, bringing Mrs. Hudson biscuits every Thursday in order to try and get some kind of inside information about the goings on at Baker Street. She’s embarrassed about it now, but she wouldn’t give up her Thursdays for anything. (She doesn’t think that Sherlock knows about her teatime at all, but John caught her there once and she is afraid that he suspects.) Now she cares a lot less about Sherlock, at least in that way, and feels genuinely fond of Mrs. Hudson. 

Molly never knew her grandmothers, one having died young and the other living halfway across the country and on the outs with her Mum besides. She doesn’t know what grandmothers are like. The ones on telly seem to like meddling, knitting and biscuits, as does Mrs. Hudson. However, though many grandmothers have cats, Mrs. Hudson prefers dogs. Mrs. Hudson has amazing stories, endless patience for “her boys” in 221B, and a wicked sense of humor. Molly wants to be like her as an older lady, though perhaps she’d prefer to be happily partnered instead of a landlady to a pair of crazed adrenaline-junkies.

The Thursday after the Christmas party Mrs. Hudson tells Molly about her ex-husband. Molly tries to keep a calm facade through Mrs. Hudson’s recital of injuries, putting on her professional listening face. It’s difficult. She can’t prevent the images from scrolling behind her eye: she’s seen too many corpses damaged from the kinds of things Mrs. Hudson experienced.

“Sherlock saved me from that,” Mrs. Hudson says. “He’s a good boy, at least where I’m concerned. But you,” she pauses, setting her cup down. “He’s not a good boy for you.” Molly flushes, unsurprised by Mrs. Hudson’s directness but unprepared to have her miserable crush acknowledged nonetheless. “Sherlock would never hurt your body the way mine was hurt, but he’d hurt your heart. You’d have bruises and broken places, just like I did. And he would mean it just as little as my ex-husband did, and find your tears just as confusing as he did. I love Sherlock, and admire his brilliance, but I know his limits.”

“I know, Mrs. Hudson, truly. The party was pretty much the last straw. It’s just…” Molly trails off. At this point she knows she’s more interested in the idea of Sherlock than the reality, but he still captivates her sometimes. He probably always will. It would take a colder woman than Molly will ever be to remain unmoved by his depth of presence and the way he prowls through a room. He sweeps through lives like a whirlwind, blowing them about, creating eddies of beautiful leaves dancing and piles of jumbled papers and trash in equal measure. She wants to feel moved, wants the winds, but not the chaos. 

Mrs. Hudson pats her hand. “Your day will come, my dear. And, if it’s any consolation, I wouldn’t feel as though you’ve missed out on too much. I can’t imagine those boys have as much fun as people imagine they do. I hear arguments more than I hear certain noises, if you know what I mean. I love Sherlock but I think that he’d disappoint. You deserve someone who’s a champion in the sack!” They laugh together and Molly feels comforted despite herself.

One day, she tells herself on the way home, one day I will have someone to bring to tea with Mrs. Hudson. And by the time I find that person, bringing him (or her!) over won’t have a thing to do with whether or not Sherlock notices.

* * * *  
After watching the kinds of things Sherlock has put John Watson through, Molly doesn’t mind Sherlock’s Christmas cruelty as much. Without the gut-stab feeling of his comments about her dress she might have never gotten a good perspective on her feelings. Finally she feels done with her pining and ready to yearn for new things. Maybe even to fulfill some yearnings.

So of course Sherlock has to muck it all up by finally noticing her. She feels concerned for him, and then annoyed that he’s decided she counts when she no longer cares about having his special attention, and then heartbroken when she realizes what she will help him do to Mrs. Hudson and John. What she herself will have to do to Mrs. Hudson. She does it anyway, because she knows that losing Sherlock and getting him back will hurt everyone less than losing him for good.

She keeps going to Baker Street on Thursdays, though both she and Mrs. Hudson talk much less than before. She buys nicer biscuits, the fancy ones, to appease her guilt. The truth keeps trying to fall out of her mouth, but she maintains the lie only because she doesn’t want Mrs. Hudson to hurt from lying to John the way Molly hurts from lying to her.

* * *  
Sherlock comes back on a Tuesday, and for the first time, Molly skips her Thursday tea with Mrs. Hudson. She wonders if Mrs. Hudson will ring to check on her, and doesn’t know what to think about the fact the phone remains silent. The next week she knocks at the door until John Watson comes downstairs and tells her that Mrs. Hudson has gone to visit her sister. “I’m sorry,” she tells him, knowing that no apology can suffice. He gives her a firm nod that she interprets as “Yes, I know,” or perhaps “That’s all right, then,” with overtones of “but I’m not quite ready to forgive either of you, so come back next week.”

She does come back next week. Mrs. Hudson cries. Molly cries, too. When she places chocolate on the plate with the biscuits, Mrs. Hudson laughs and pats her hand. “So that’s what all those treats were about! I thought you’d gotten a raise.” She passes Molly a tissue. “Honestly, I was hardly even surprised when Sherlock came back. He never does what I expect.” 

Molly stammers another apology and Mrs. Hudson smiles. “I actually think that I’m quite proud of you, dear. Imagine, fooling everyone like that! I’d never manage having a secret for that long.” 

Molly laughs. “I have this feeling you have secrets you’ll take to the grave,” she says.

* * * 

Two months later Molly trips on a crack in the pavement and comes down on her knee. Someone crashes into her back and a cup of coffee falls past her shoulder, hits the pavement, and splashes open onto her trousers.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” says a woman’s voice. Molly struggles to her feet, wincing a bit.

“It’s fine,” Molly says. “It’s my fault, the pavement moved or something, sorry.”

The woman laughs. Her short cropped black haircut has a long fringe that flops onto her forehead. When she pushes it aside Molly sees that her eyes are a sort of pale greenish color, arresting in contrast to her dusky skin. Molly finds herself a bit breathless, probably from the fall but also maybe from the woman’s smile.

“I’m Molly,” she says, “and I think I owe you a coffee.”


End file.
